A silver halide color photographic material, based on the principle of forming the three primary colors by a subtractive color process, is generally composed of a blue-sensitive silver halide emulsion layer containing a coupler which reacts to form a yellow dye by undergoing a coupling reaction with the oxidation product of an aromatic primary amine developing agent, a green-sensitive silver halide emulsion layer containing a coupler similarly forming a magenta dye, and a red-sensitive silver halide emulsion layer containing a coupler similarly forming a cyan dye, and further comprises light-insensitive layers such as an interlayer for preventing the occurrence of color mixing between the emulsion layers, a protective layer for preventing the emulsion layer from direct contact with foreign matter, etc.
These silver halide emulsion layers and light-in-sensitive layers may also contain a color mixing preventing agent, a fading preventing agent, an ultraviolet absorbent, etc., according to their known purposes. These additives are, for the most part, hydrphobic substances and hence they are each dissolved in a high-boiling organic solvent and then added to a silver haldide emulsion or a hydrophilic colloid solution as an emulsified dispersion of the organic solvent solution thereof.
In general, a standard or conventional processing method for silver halide color photographic materials of this nature comprises (1) a color development step for forming color images, (2) a desilvering step for removing developed silver and undeveloped silver, followed by (3) a washing and/or image stabilization step.
Hitherto, it has been desirable to shorten the overall processing time for such color photographic materials, but especially recently, the necessity for shortening the processing time has further been increased, with a view toward shortening the time for delivery, reducing the laboratory work, and desizing and simplifying the processing system for small-scale laboratories (called mini-labs).
Heretofore, various kinds of developing agent pentrants have been investigated for increasing coloring properties while reducing the processing time necessary for color development of silver halide color photographic materials using oil protect-type couplers. In particular, a method of adding benzyl alcohol to a color developer has been widely used for processing color photographic papers, color reversal papers, and color positive films for display.
However, since benzyl alcohol is only slightly soluble in water, solvents such as diethylene glycol, triethylene glycol, alkanolamine, etc., are required to be added to the developer solution to increase the solubility of benzyl alcohol. These solvents, and also benzyl alcohol, however, show high BOD (biological oxygen demand) and COD (chemical oxygen demand) and thus are considered pollutants in terms of disposing of used developers. Thus, it is preferred to avoid the use of these compounds from the viewpoint of protecting the environment from pollution.
Furthermore, when using benzyl alcohol, it takes a long period of time to dissolve benzyl alcohol even when one of the above-described solvents is used; hence, avoiding the use of benzyl alcohol altogether will aid in reducing the time required to prepare the developer solution.
Still further, if benzyl alcohol is present in the color developer, some of the developing agent is liable to remain in the photographic materials after processing, which results in a reduction of the image stability over time, and particularly undesirably increases the amounts of color image fading and color stains in the background portions under light exposure. In particular, in the above-described processing method, where the step (particularly, washing step) subsequent to the development step is shortened, the developing agent is even more likely to remain in the photographic materials processed and hence the above-described problems due to an excess of leftover developing agent in the materials become more serious.
Also, when the photographic material has a reflective support, such as a color photographic paper, such stains are visually amplified as compared with a photographic material having a transparent support, which is also highly undesirable.
It is known to form a layer containing one or more ultraviolet absorbents in a photographic material for improving the storage stability of images under light exposure, but the effects as to improving stability by incorporating ultraviolet absorbents is insufficient from a practical standpoint in processing system using benzyl alcohol in the developer.
Thus, to eliminate the various problems described above, it has been desired to avoid the use of benzyl alcohol altogether and to shorten the overall processing time. However, this goal has not yet been achieved for multilayer color photographic materials having silver halide emulsion layers containing color-forming couplers together with interlayers and one or more protective layers since in such materials, the color density of the resulting formed images is reduced.